She rides a Harley and wears a full-length fur, but don't draw any conclusions about Trina Dru Gordon.

The president and chief executive officer of Boyden World Corp. racks up mileage these days in a conservative navy pinstripe suit and prefers consensus-building over a more swashbuckling CEO style. Her approach has been honed, after all, over more than three decades of identifying the right executives for top roles in retail and consumer products companies.

Gordon, a veteran Chicago headhunter and the executive search firm's first female CEO, has spent the past 20 months trying to wrangle Boyden's far-flung global franchises into a united brand, even as it struggles with new competition and declining industrywide revenues.

Capping that effort later this month at a company meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, Gordon plans to unveil a substantial professional development program called Boyden University, an internal live and online training and information exchange designed to link offices more closely to win business rather than competing against each other. It's a major initiative on Gordon's watch, an investment aimed at getting the company's independently owned offices working together.

While declining to offer specifics before deals are announced, she has been emphasizing opportunities to develop executive talent in emerging markets. The company will also open new global offices this year and add staff in key existing markets.

The moves come amid the backdrop of wrenching change in recent years in an industry that has struggled with a recession and competition from online job-search sites and networking sites like LinkedIn. Those enable employers to directly access a much wider pool of candidates.

Industry revenue declined 6.4 percent in 2012, to $9.74 billion, and was 11.5 percent below the high in 2008, according to the Association of Executive Search Consultants.

Gordon, who works from the Chicago office of the Purchase, N.Y.-based firm, sees a niche in leveraging the firm's international footprint to go after more high-level assignments, the C-suite and board searches that typically aren't carried out online.

"Emerging markets will be critical for us because they're critical for our clients," she said. The newest emerging markets in Asia might not have a deep talent pool yet, for example, but the firm can identify candidates through its Latin American offices who have recently logged success there, she said.

"She's attempting to revitalize a great name in this business," said Robert Benson, an industry veteran who runs a consulting business. "Every one of the recruiting firms is faced with, 'How am I going to differentiate myself in a market where I'm competing with my own clients for the work that's out there?'"

Bristling with talent

Sid Boyden founded his namesake firm in New York in 1946, just ahead of today's biggest players, which include Chicago's Heidrick & Struggles and Spencer Stuart, according to a 50-year retrospective written in 2009 by the Association of Executive Search Consultants.

It was an intensely clubby, male-dominated industry that came late to the women's movement, a source of frustration as Gordon tried to make a name for herself in the business. Her strategy: learning everything possible about a client, whether it meant hanging around trade shows or checking out retail displays.

"I wasn't always the first person that would draw the attention of the client in the room," she said of her early career, which began in 1977 with William H. Clark Associates, a Chicago recruiting firm. "I learned everything, so that when I spoke there was some credibility behind it."

She did, however, garner attention from Clark President Richard McCallister, who hired Gordon after she graduated from Auburn University and married her about two years later.

One of her Auburn professors had called McCallister asking if he'd see her and give her a few pointers on interviewing for jobs.

"I agreed to meet with her but told (the professor) we had no current job opportunities," he recalled. "After a 45-minute conversation, I took her to lunch and took her around the office to meet other partners. By 4 p.m. I hired her.

"Some people just bristle with talent and composure. There was just something about how she handled herself … a sophistication beyond her years. It was the best hire I ever made."

McCallister merged the firm with Boyden in 1989, and Gordon became a Boyden equity partner in 1995. After her husband had spent about a decade on the Boyden board, he stepped down, and she joined the board in 2001. She was elected board chair for the first of a pair of two-year terms beginning in 2007.

The privately held company, which does not divulge annual revenue figures, has an unusual governance structure. Its far-flung offices are independently owned franchises whose owners elect a board of directors from their own ranks. The board selects the CEO, and there are no outside directors. So, in effect, the roughly 250 partners hold a lot more power over the corporate center than would, for example, McDonald's franchisees.

With Gordon's term as chair, a nonexecutive role, ending in 2011, she began thinking hard about throwing her hat into the ring to become CEO, an operations job where she would have to herd offices often competing against each other for clients into a seamless group that could survive external challenges.

She served a few months as interim CEO after the departure of CEO Chris Clarke, who had been on the job 11 years, and won the permanent job in July 2011, though it was made official in October of that year, she said.

Since that time, in addition to having an aggressive travel schedule to promote the brand, she has replaced some executives in regional offices and made a couple of hires in the marketing and professional development area.

"We still have our areas of challenge, but today we have a more rigorous commitment to growth," said James Hertlein, managing director of Boyden's Houston office and a member of the board.

She took over during a difficult time, and revenues haven't turned around, but the seeds are in place, he said.

"The commitment of the offices to the collective goals of the organization are stronger than they've ever been," Hertlein said. "We've had situations where performance (at certain offices) didn't meet expectations, and we've taken action. Under Trina, that's happened a little more frequently.

"She's introduced a new discipline at the office level, requiring more concrete plans and holding people accountable."

Acting fast

The board considered other internal and external candidates but decided Gordon could make the most change quickly given her existing relationships in the firm and her long career in active searches before that, Hertlein said.

James Lillie, CEO of Jarden Corp., parent company to consumer brands including Coleman and Marmot, is a longtime client.

"Trina understands our DNA," Lillie said. "We may not hire the smartest person. We want the best person who fits with our alchemy and can row the boat with us."

As for her management style, Gordon says she likes starting committees to work on internal projects because it spreads the word quickly about what needs to be done.

And she advises executives in new positions to take control early of a few key projects.

"Absolutely prioritize your agenda," she said, adding that nothing derails a new top hire faster than unfocused leadership. "Focus on the critical things, and drive those priorities to achievement."

Meanwhile, McCallister and Gordon say the marriage has survived the turnabout in corporate roles quite nicely, thank you, though they try to minimize shoptalk at home.

"We have the 'no business after 5 on Friday, until 8 on Monday' rule,'' he said. "You have to, though we rarely see each other during the week," he said, alluding to Gordon's business travel schedule. For the past 26 years, though, the couple have carved out time alone to celebrate their anniversary on the Amalfi Coast.

Gordon says she has visited about 85 percent of the firm's roughly 65 global offices and routinely books speaking engagements overseas as she tries to build the company's image and get offices to work together more effectively. She spends about a week a month at the New York corporate office, and she just completed a swing through Asia, with stops including Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong to meet partners and speak to business groups.

When not traversing the globe or riding the Harley (her husband had one first, but she didn't want to ride on the back, he says), Gordon serves on civic boards and has been involved with groups promoting the advancement of women in the workplace, including The Chicago Network.

She is president of Friends of Prentice, the charity benefiting Prentice Women's Hospital, and is on the executive committee of Northwestern Memorial Foundation's board of directors. She and McCallister recently pledged $1 million in future gifts to Prentice.

On a recent afternoon, she walked through the Prentice space and its connection to the new Children's Memorial Hospital with Stephen Falk, president of Northwestern Memorial Foundation, comparing notes on different aspects of the facility.

"Trina's intensity keeps us focused on what needs to be done," Falk said. "She'll often start a meeting saying, 'This is what we need to get done before we leave this room.' There's little to no ambivalence."

That intensity paid off in 2010, when Gordon helped start Run for Prentice, a fundraising effort tied to the Chicago Marathon. Gordon ran the race the first year and keeps her participation medal in a frame in her office.

Carol Lavin Bernick, CEO of Polished Nickel Capital Management, recalled an awkward time when she and Gordon were working on another charity project for Prentice. A donor offered to help sponsor an event, but other donors let it be known they didn't approve because of some ethical lapses, Bernick said.

"We ended up turning down the money because it was the right thing to do, but I just remember how tactfully Trina handled it," she said.

That quality pays off in her work life too, as she tries to get partners to collaborate on winning business.

"It takes a lot of consistent communication and a lot of value demonstration that this is the place we need to be," she said, responding to a question about the pace of change at the company. "Internally, it's been a very big evolution for our firm."

Trina Gordon, president and chief executive officer, Boyden World Corp.

Hometown: Alliance, Ohio

College: Bachelor of Science, political science, Auburn University; Master of Arts, health administration, also from Auburn